The much-awaited 2021 Novel Excerpt Contest longlist is here! This longlist of 56 novel excerpts represents some of the very best submissions we received in a very competitive contest. Congratulations to all of the authors featured on this list, and thank you from the bottom of our hearts to all of our submitters! Tomorrow, we’ll unveil the shortlist of 15 excerpts from which Dan Chaon will be selecting the winners.
“Excerpt from The Ghost Wife” by Joy Baglio
“Story from Baghdad” by Greg Bayer
“Zora’s Tribe” by Susan Burgess-Lent
“Doublewide” by Tim Casey
“Displaced” by Olivia Kate Cerrone
“Mother Of The Victim” by Jessica Ciosek
“From Bioluminescence: Annie. Monday.” by Elizabeth Conway
“Bloodletter” by Kerry Cullen
“Everything is True Here (Excerpt)” by Mary Catherine Curley
“Paradise Undone: A Novel of Jonestown” by Annie Dawid
“A Place to Be Forgotten” by Gabriel de Anda
“Watch for the Change” by Josh Denslow
“The Promise” (from The Shine Palace) by Rebecca Eagleton
“Adaptive Peaks” by Brianna Fenty
“Chapter 1” by Karen George
“Come on, Be Fun (Novel Excerpt)” by Gina Goldblatt
“The Girl Who Wanted to Be God” by Kate Gray
“Secrets of a Different Kind” by Linda Heller
“A Second Self” by Eva Hibbs
“A Cold Season” by Matthew Hooper
“Gion Boy” by Noriko Hoshino
“Here/Gone” by Emily James
“Where Drowned Children Go” by James S Kendall
“I’m Not That Bad a Person” by Linda Lenhoff
“The Last of the Tippets” by Kathryn Etters Lovatt
“The Circles” by Barbara McHugh
“Home is Only a Word – Chapter 1” by Tamar Mekredijian
“Shell Kills Cub” by Cameron Mitchell
“Galveston Eyes” by Lisbeth Mizula
“The Five Times I Fell In Love With Caroline Parker” by Daniel Moore
“Excerpt of The Last Thing She Expected” by David Moore
“The Mogul, A Baseball Fantasy” by Bill Morgan
Walk Good—“Threads in the Pocket of a Man No Good” by Stephanie Mullings
“Notes From the Day” by Meg Mullins
“The Pranks of the Gods” by Gyanendra Nair
“Fairytale House” by Leo Newhouse
“Indigo Lace” by Noelle Nori
“The King’s Painter” by Leanne Ogasawara
“Sundogs” by Meghan O’Toole
“Shimmer” by Leslie Palleson
“The Dry Season” by Elizabeth Peterson
“Death Is a Hungry Old Man – Excerpt” by Sara Probst
“The Fudtró Miracle” by Huascar Robles
“The Fifth Form of Attraction” by Barry Rosenberg
“As Though to Breathe Were Life” by Sarah Schiff
“Saved” by Hollis Shore
“The Faerie Ring” by Jeff Stautz
“Eternity” by Amy Strong
“All Out of Order – Chapter 20: Daze of Old” by Grace Tatigian
“The Hawthorn and the Willow” by Judy Taylor
“VICTORIA” by Mark Daniel Taylor
“In The New Year” by Nicole VanderLinden
“New Medford, 1998” by Monona Wali
“Overmorrow” by Liz Warren-Pederson
“Mind Fullness (Chapters 1-3A)” by Lynda Wayne